A Graphic Master: Charles White July 14, 2009

Joann Moser, Senior Curator, wrote the following blog post about one of our recent acquisitions to American Art's collection.

Untitled, by Charles White, 1950, ink and graphite on paper, 29 3/4 x 20 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Julie Seitzman and museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment

It is rare that we have an opportunity to exhibit an artwork soon after the museum acquires it, so we are particularly excited about the drawing by Charles White featured at the entrance to our current exhibition Graphic Masters II—Untitled, (1950)—a recent addition to the American Art Museum’s unparalleled collection of African American art.

Charles White (1918–1979) was a leading African American artist of the twentieth century and is best known for his masterful drawings. White grew up in poverty and faced special discrimination for his political affiliations. In searching for his pieces, we especially wanted to acquire a drawing that captured the anger and sense of displacement that fed the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s.

In this intense composition, two figures stare out of a narrow window. The young girl cradles a large doll in her arms. The doll is missing a head, arms, and feet. The larger second figure is possibly an older brother, or perhaps her mother. The cramped space of this composition, made even more confined by the two horizontal planks across the window frame, creates a feeling of tension and claustrophobia. At what are the figures looking? What is their relationship? Why is the doll missing parts of its body? Do the two boards across the window simply confine the figures, or do they also represent the restrictions imposed on people of their race? This drawing is charged with ambiguities and possibilities and seems to express the anxieties of African American people in pre-civil rights days. The subject recalls another work in our collection, Fright, a watercolor by William H. Johnson, in which a family appears frightened by an unseen threat.

When we purchased this drawing by White, the gallery had named it Untitled (Two Children). As I studied it, I realized there seems to be a significant age difference between the two figures. Although the figure at the right could be an older sibling, I think it is the girl's mother. What do you think?

Explore the slide show for Graphic Masters II: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum to see more images of artworks included in the exhibition. Go ahead and post here your thoughts on other pieces in the show.

• Charles White, Drawing, African American, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Picture This: Out of This Case July 9, 2009

Dave DeAnna and Matt Bacon from our Registrar's Office removed two artworks from the contemporary craft section in the Luce Foundation Center for American Art last week. These works (Alhambra Vase and Zanfirico Apple) will be going out on loan. Would you like to help us find replacements to display in their case? Check out our Fill the Gap project on Flickr.

• American Craft, Luce Foundation Center, Flickr, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Jean Shin July 6, 2009

Jean Shin's Everyday Monuments

If you're walking through a city, say New York or Washington D.C., you may want to have Jean Shin by your side. You may know your way around familiar streets, but through Shin's eyes you'll be able to look at the overlooked and see how the ordinary can rise to the level of art.

Her exhibition, Jean Shin: Common Threads, is currently up at the American Art Museum. It is made up of half a dozen or so installations, including Everyday Monuments, which was commissioned by the museum. Many of the works have a sense of cityscape to them, or an architectural element that keeps the works grounded. Even Everyday Monuments, composed of more than 2000 altered trophies, is based on the scale of the National Mall.

In Common Threads there's a video of Penumbra, her installation at the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York. Shin removed the fabric from the metal of discarded umbrellas and wove the nylon pieces together. Chance City, another work in the exhibition, is a literal house of cards. It is composed of thousands of losing and discarded lottery tickets that have been assembled without the use of any adhesives. So many unrealized dreams seem to waft from that handmade city's skyline.

Shin has taken everyday objects and helped us to see them as if for the first time. The element of social exchange runs through many of her pieces, particularly because she often asks for donations of materials from family, friends, and related communities. I think the exchange continues when you visit the exhibition and engage with Shin's vision.

On Tuesday, July 7, at 6:00 pm, Jean Shin will hold a conversation with Joanna Marsh, curator of contemporary art, and Hugh Shockey, museum conservator, about the challenges of creating--and conserving--artworks made of ephemeral materials. (American Art Museum, McEvoy Auditorium, Lower Level)

• Jean Shin, Contemporary Art, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Robert Motherwell’s Monster for Charles Ives July 2, 2009

Robert Motherwell's Monster (for Charles Ives)

Robert Motherwell, known as an intellectual painter, has sometimes been called the spokesperson for the abstract expressionist movement. He painted in a style that often involved spontaneously generated images on large fields of canvas. Fifty years ago, in 1959, he created Monster (for Charles Ives). It has a white circle slightly off center that looks like a porthole on a ship looking into fog.

As the title suggests, a hulking animal, made up of brown brushwork on a dirty white ground, looms. The composition is reminiscent of Motherwell's previous interpretations of Francisco Goya’s The Dog. At the time of the painting, Motherwell was listening to a festival of music by avant-garde composer Charles Ives on radio station WBAI in New York. Motherwell remarked that his painting expressed the difficulties faced by the American artist. “I dedicated the painting to Ives, for the title refers to the monstrous ambiguity of the modernist artist’s situation, which Ives no less (and no more) epitomizes than other deeply serious composers, poet, playwrights, painters and sculptors in the U.S.A. in the twentieth century."

Motherwell was perhaps the most "political" of the abstract expressionists and did not shy away from social commentary. His painting series "Elegies to the Spanish Republic" delves into the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). (See paintings from this series in the Metropolitan, the MoMA, and the Guggenheim.) I admire Motherwell for not turning away from war and other miseries, and for showing us the light that emerges out of darkness. "Monsters occur more often in my work than may be supposed," Motherwell said as well. That quote has made me take a closer, deeper look at Motherwell's work, in case I may have missed something.

Not all monsters are the kind lurking under the stairs. Some are right in front of you. The trick is to find them before they find you.

Check out more artworks in our collection by Robert Motherwell and explore our online exhibition Modernism and Abstraction for a survey of other artists. You can find related books in our online shop: Modernism and Abstraction: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Modern Masters: American Abstraction at Midcentury.

• Robert Motherwell, Charles Ives, Abstract Expressionism, Modernism, American Art,
  Smithsonian American Art Museum

In this Case: More 1934 in the Luce Foundation Center June 25, 2009

Waterfront—Brooklyn by Harry Shokler

It was August last year when visitors on my tour started to pause a bit longer in front of cases 34b to 38a. All of a sudden the public’s interest was piqued by these paintings of industry, a hard day’s work, and the American heartland. Now almost a year on, recent economic events have brought these pictures of the "American Scene" from the 1930s sharply into focus. Many of those paintings originally shown in the Luce Foundation Center now feature in the exhibition 1934: A New Deal for Artists, currently on display at the American Art Museum. The show focuses on the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), a government program that supported artists from December 1933 to June 1934 during the Great Depression.

The exhibition is timely but also, I think, notable for being drawn entirely from the American Art Museum’s permanent collection. This is why I would like to point you back to the Luce Foundation Center, our visible storage center, where there are twelve more paintings from the PWAP on view. The museum has great depth in this area, meaning that the Luce Center has been able to replace the departing paintings with more works from storage. If you’ve enjoyed 1934: A New Deal for Artists at the museum or online, then I suggest coming up to the Luce Foundation Center to see more.

Among the highlights is Waterfront—Brooklyn, a harbor snow scene showing the perpetual movement of workers, cranes, boats, smoke, and trams. In the background, the great skyscrapers of Manhattan signal recent achievements, and in the foreground the homey Majestic Diner beckons—the reward at the end of the working day. In addition to the twelve paintings from 1934, the Luce Center has works created for the Federal Art Project (FAP), which ran from 1935 to 1943. This last program includes our collection of mural studies for public buildings across America. Seeing these paintings next to each other is a great way to appreciate the influence of federal art programs and is a sure way to introduce yourself to some fascinating new artists.

The catalogue for 1934: A New Deal for Artists will be available this summer.

• 1934, Harry Shockler, Luce Foundation Center, Public Works of Art Project, American Art,
  Smithsonian American Art Museum